


These Memories, They Haunt Me

by cheshirccat



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Gen, Other, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Recovered Memories, the soldier has a hard time with recovered memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 12:54:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16598288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheshirccat/pseuds/cheshirccat
Summary: He bolted up out of bed, sweat running in cold rivulets down his back, sticking his tank top to his skin.It wasn’t the first time he’d had nightmares like this. Memories of his kills resurfacing, much the same way that his other memories came back to him. But this was the most solid memory of one of his missions he’d ever gotten back. It was the first time he’d remembered names to go along with the faces, the first time he remembered their voices in their final moments.--The Soldier struggles with resurfacing memories and not knowing who he is.





	These Memories, They Haunt Me

**Author's Note:**

> Who's bad at writing summaries? I'm bad at writing summaries!
> 
> I have a lot of feelings about Bucky/Winter Soldier, okay? I can no longer suffer these feelings in silence, so I'm going to make everyone else suffer with me.

_“Howard?” Maria Stark’s voice came from the car, agonized and confused. She was reaching for her husband when he was dragged out of the car by the Soldier._

_Neither were his target. His target was in the trunk—the serum meant to create more Soldiers like him—but he’d been instructed to leave no witnesses._

_Howard Stark, white-haired and thinner than he had been in the forties—almost gaunt—looked up at him, eyes widening in recognition._

_“…Sergeant Barnes?” he choked out. The Soldier didn’t respond. Whoever Howard Stark thought he was, he was wrong. His left fist connected with Howard Stark’s face two, three times. The sickening crunch of bones met his ears and Howard Stark’s body went limp._

_“Howard!” Maria Stark, still in the car, made another noise of agony and horror as she witnessed her husband placed back in the vehicle, bloodied face against the wheel. The Soldier moved around to the other side of the car where Maria Stark sat, injured and in shock. His hand closed around her throat, cutting off her airway. She was too weak from the crash to try and fight him, and he felt the life leave her body less than a minute later._

_He popped open the trunk and cracked open the briefcase that was his target, checking to make sure the serum was in there. He glanced around, catching sight of the security camera. He stalked over to it and put a bullet through it._

 

He bolted up out of bed, sweat running in cold rivulets down his back, sticking his tank top to his skin.

It wasn’t the first time he’d had nightmares like this. Memories of his kills resurfacing, much the same way that his other memories came back to him. But this was the most solid memory of one of his missions he’d ever gotten back. It was the first time he’d remembered names to go along with the faces, the first time he remembered their voices in their final moments. The sound of Maria Stark calling out her husband’s name echoed in his mind on repeat, like a broken record.

He pulled off his sweat-sticky tank top and headed into his bathroom, turning on the water and stepping under the spray before it had the chance to get warm. He shivered, another memory swimming to the surface.

 

_The icy spray of the cleaning hoses on his skin made his muscles contract almost violently as his body tried to warm itself, his entire frame shaking. It felt like it went on forever, until the shaking began to subside and his body began to numb to the feeling. Then the water was just as abruptly shut off and he began to shiver again. His left hand clenched into a fist, the metal plates shifting._

_His ears pricked at the muffled sound of voices on the other side of the glass. He couldn’t pick out any individual words, but it was odd to hear voices at all. Unless they were giving him orders or using his trigger words, he didn’t hear chatter. They didn’t think it safe._

_He didn’t get much of a chance to dwell on it before air, just as cold as the water had been, blasted him through holes in the walls, floor, and ceiling to dry him off._

 

The water in the shower warmed and chased off the lingering feeling of cold that had settled under his skin at the memory. He stood in the shower with the water as hot as he could handle it until it started to cool on its own, then he shut it off with a twist of his wrist and stepped out of the shower, toweling himself dry and pulling on clothes, layered to keep out the chill.

The streets of Bucharest were busy as always, the market bustling with people even early in the morning. He felt more comfortable conversing in Romanian to the people around him than he ever felt speaking Russian. Even English was heavy and foreign on his tongue nowadays, though something told him that it was actually his native language. He couldn’t really remember anything to that effect, save maybe bits of conversation in English to the man he’d pulled out of the Potomac. The man whose name he could recall with vivid clarity.

_Steve._

It was the only name that made sense. The one that Steve had referred to him by—Bucky—and the one that he’d read in the museum—James Barnes—didn’t feel quite right to him. That man may have shared his face, but he shared none of his experiences. The life of James Buchanan Barnes was one the Soldier had never lived. It felt wrong trying to claim his name.

Others itched in his mind. He knew now the names of Howard and Maria Stark. He knew why he was familiar with those names. And it left a bad taste in his mouth. They weren’t the only ones he felt he knew but didn’t know why. He couldn’t put his finger on what most of them were. But there was one that rang a bell in his mind that he couldn’t connect to anything.

_Natalia._

A Russian name. Not Hydra, though. He couldn’t put a face to the name, but he did know for a fact that she’d never been Hydra.

The familiar sound of Romanian snapped him back to reality, and he remembered where he was. The bustle of the marketplace moved around him like a river. He’d been picking through a fruit stand on autopilot, only coming back to himself when the lady addressed him, a kind smile on her face.

He purchased some of her fruit and made his way back to his little apartment, stowing the food away in the fridge and grabbing his journal and pen, writing down his memories in as much detail as he could remember. He hadn’t forgotten anything that had come back to him yet, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

 

_Classical music met his ears from the room beyond the one he was stood in, two guards on either side of him—Hydra’s manpower sent to keep him in check. The people working in this facility didn’t know how to control him yet._

_The music was piano, tinny enough for him to know that it wasn’t being played from an actual piano in the other room. There was a swishing sound of movement, softened against the wooden floor. In contrast, there were sharp, heeled footsteps that faded and grew stronger as the woman creating the noises circled about the room. Just by listening to her, he could pinpoint which way she was circling—left to right. She snapped in Russian and the swishing sound came again._

_When the music shut off, the swishing movement noises stopped. The heeled footsteps continued as the woman rounded around the opposite direction she’d been going the whole time, finally coming to a stop. She addressed the room, dismissing the girls from their class._

_They filed out in a line, and he could finally determine what exactly the swishing noises and soft padded footfalls were. Short, flowy skirts over leotards and tights, their feet clad in ballet slippers. A dance class, he thought with some bemusement. Interesting way of teaching them how to be lethal and graceful at the same time._

_He didn’t know all the details of why he was here, but he could guess. Given the sharpness of the eyes trained on him, the focus in their gazes, they were being trained to be like him—lethal assassins. He was there to give them combat training._

_The girls were young, ranging between twelve and nineteen just by the looks of their faces. Most of them were unimpressive-looking, gangly things with bodies that could snap like twigs given the right amount of pressure in the right place. His eyes, as they slid over the group, stopped on one girl in particular. Red hair pulled back in a severe bun just like all the others, with green eyes that held the same amount of focus as her brethren, but with a fire in them that the others lacked. When he met the eyes of the other girls, they averted their gazes. This one didn’t. She stared right back, defiant._

_He didn’t know if he liked her, or wanted to break her. Potentially both._

_“Girls,” the woman in charge—the one wearing heels, he noticed—said in Russian, “go get dressed for training exercises. Be back in fifteen minutes. Natalia…that means you.” The redhead never broke his gaze._

_“Understood,” she said. The girls turned in unison and filed down the hallway._

 

The memory went in the journal.

The name put to a face suddenly clicked. The woman on the bridge with Steve. That was Natalia. When he’d been taken away from the Red Room, he’d been wiped and put back in cryo-sleep. He would have had no way of knowing how much time had passed since then, no way of remembering her.

He knew, though, why the move she’d used against him on the street, electrocuting his arm and stalling him, had struck such a chord inside him.

He’d taught it to her.

He’d shown her how to incapacitate him, and she’d done it.

He felt oddly proud of her, after the fact.

 

Her name became as important to him as Steve’s. They were something concrete, something solid to hold onto. His own identity as slippery as it was, he was grateful to have something, someone, he knew.

He had their names written on the first page of the journal.

_Steven Grant Rogers._

_Natalia Alianovna Romanova._

Two lines underneath them were two more names that he could put faces to.

_Howard Stark._

_Maria Stark._

He wished he could remember the others’ names. One came back to him every night, just more of the horrors he had committed to add to the journal. He had never felt so guilty for not remembering a name. Sometimes he wondered if he had ever been told their names by his handlers. He couldn’t say for sure.

 

The nights where he didn’t wake up in a cold sweat from something coming back to him were few and far between. Sometimes, he would spend the day sitting on the mattress on the floor that served as his bed, his back pressed against the wall, his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms resting atop them while he sorted through everything he could remember, his journal clutched, unopened, in his right hand. In between recollections, he’d repeat those names to himself, to ground him.

_Steven Grant Rogers._

_Natalia Alianovna Romanova._

Other days found him in the market or just walking the streets of Bucharest as an attempt to get out of his own broken head. 

 

He was in the marketplace the day everything changed. The kid at the paper stand had never paid him any attention before, but now he was openly staring. The headline on the paper, the picture that accompanied it, told him that his little respite was over. It was time to run again.

 

He was there when he got back to his apartment, slipping in unnoticed through the door and shutting it silently behind him. Steve stood there, the journal in his hand. He watched him, unsure if he would see the names on the first page and put things together, put together the fact that he was remembered. He didn’t seem to see them, though, saying something to someone that was probably on a comm line with him. He finally seemed to notice his shadow and turned, sizing him up.

“Do you know me?” The first words out of Steve’s mouth, and all he could think was, _Of course I do._

“You’re Steve.”

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaaannnnnnd we end on a hopeful note because that's just how we do. Hope you liked it, feel free to leave comments if you want, I'd really appreciate it.


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